Published: Dec 21, 2020 By Alex Keown
Shares of
NantKwest were up more than 27% in premarket trading after the company announced a
stock-for-stock reverse merger with privately-held ImmunityBio to create a leading immunotherapy and cell therapy company focused on oncology and infectious disease.
Biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, who founded both companies and currently serves as chief executive officer of ImmunityBio, merged them in order to combine NantKwest’s Natural Killer (NK) cell platform and ImmunityBio’s immunotherapy fusion protein, immunomodulator, and adenovirus platforms have already resulted in complete responses in late stage, difficult to treat metastatic cancers. The combined companies bring together 11 Phase II / III clinical trials across oncology and infectious disease that use combined immunotherapy platforms, as well as a broad late-stage pipeline for solid tumors including bladder, lung, breast, and pancreatic in addition to infect